We study how language varies, how information is encoded and exchanged, and what this can tell us about communication and understanding.
Our research combines linguistic theory, computational and information-theoretic approaches, and experimental methods, including virtual reality, to investigate variation in language and communication across contexts, communities and time. Increasingly, we are extending this perspective to individual differences in how people process and exchange information.
At the heart of our lab are the people behind the research. Each brings their own questions, expertise and perspective.
Sofía Aguilar
Sofía studies how concepts and scientific ideas emerge, compete, and change over time. With a background spanning bioengineering and computational linguistics, she brings an unusually interdisciplinary perspective to questions of semantic and conceptual change.
Her work combines historical scientific discourse with computational methods, complex networks, and information-theoretic measures. What I especially admire about Sofía is her intellectual curiosity and courage: she is willing to question assumptions, cross disciplinary boundaries, and build new methods when existing ones are not enough.
Diego Alves
Diego works at the intersection of computational linguistics, multilingual NLP, corpus linguistics, and linguistic typology. His research explores how languages vary in structure and use, from cross-linguistic word order and dependency patterns to Portuguese varieties, language contact, and information-theoretic measures such as surprisal and entropy.
What I particularly value about Diego is the combination of technical depth and linguistic intuition. He has a rare ability to make complex computational ideas accessible and to connect methods with genuinely interesting linguistic questions. In the lab, he brings precision, generosity, and a collaborative way of thinking that strengthens the work around him.
Isabell Landwehr
Isabell studies how scientific language becomes more compact and complex and what that means for the people who have to process it.
Her research focuses on noun phrase complexity, modification patterns, and compounds in scientific writing, combining diachronic corpus analysis with quantitative syntax and, increasingly, psycholinguistic evidence such as eye-tracking. She is particularly interested in how linguistic structure, expertise, and processing interact.
What I especially value about Isabell is her persistence and analytical precision. She has a wonderful ability to take a linguistic pattern (e.g. a compound) and uncover the much larger story behind it. Her work brings together historical change and real-time processing in a way that makes us look differently at something we often take for granted: how complexity is packaged into language.
Marc Simon
Marc is interested in how differences between people shape the way they perceive, process, and use language.
His current work investigates individual variation in information processing and communication, with a particular focus on sensory processing sensitivity. Using Virtual Reality, he explores how controlled changes in social and sensory environments can influence language use and interaction.
What I especially value about Marc is the experimental perspective he brings to the lab. His work allows us to move beyond patterns in texts and ask what happens when people actually communicate under different conditions, opening up new ways of studying the relationship between information processing, language, and interaction.
Anastasiia Vestel
Anastasiia studies how language can gradually reshape the way events, actors, and realities are represented, especially in politically contested contexts.
Her research focuses on propaganda, framing, and semantic change in Russian media and online discourse. Combining corpus linguistics with interpretable computational methods, she traces how linguistic choices diverge across sources and change over time, including shifts from direct war terminology to euphemistic or ideologically reframed expressions.
What I especially value about Anastasiia’s work is the perspective it brings to the lab: it connects fine-grained linguistic analysis with broader questions of framing, public discourse, and information environments. This adds an important societal dimension to our research on language variation and change.
My Leadership Motto
Understanding changes everything 